The Authors Registry – About The Authors Registry

History

The Authors Registry was created as a not-for-profit corporation in 1995 by a consortium of U.S. authors' organizations and the primary U.S. literary rights organization: The Authors Guild, The American Society of Journalists & Authors, the Dramatists Guild, and the Association of Authors' Representatives. Since its inception, the Authors Registry has distributed over $5,000,000 to authors in the United States.

Directors and Officers

Roy Blount Jr., president of the Authors Guild, is the author of nineteen books, most recently Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans. He is a panelist on NPR's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me" and a columnist for the Oxford American.

Jack El-Hai is a current board member and past president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He is the author of several books, most recently The Lobotomist, and contributes to many national and regional magazines. He lives in Minneapolis and has taught at the University of Minnesota and The Loft Literary Center.

James Gleick is the author of Isaac Newton, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, Chaos: Making a New Science (National Book Award nominee), and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (National Book Award nominee). After working as a reporter for The New York Times, Mr. Gleick was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University. In 1993, he co-founded the Pipeline, a New York City-based Internet service that pioneered the first full-featured graphical user interface for Internet access from Windows and Macintosh computers. He collaborated with the photographer Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software. He was the editor of Best American Science Writing 2000.

Robin Davis Miller, an attorney, was Executive Director of the Authors Guild from 1993-1995.

Peter Petre is the co-author, with former IBM chairman Thomas J. Watson, Jr., of Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond. He is co-author, with General Norman H. Schwarzkopf, of It Doesn't Take a Hero. A senior editor at large at Fortune, Mr. Petre directs the magazine's coverage of information technology, industrial technology, biotechnology, science, and innovation.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin is the author of eight books, including Family Politics, Among Friends, Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America, Getting Over Getting Older: An Intimate Journey and, most recently, Three Daughters. Ms. Pogrebin is a founding editor of Ms. magazine, where she has served as editor, columnist, contributor, and editor-at-large. She also writes a column for Moment magazine, and is a contributing editor at Family Circle. She has been a columnist & editorial board member of Tikkun since 1992, and was a columnist for Ladies Home Journal from 1971-81. She currently sits on the editorial advisory board of CommonQuest, a magazine of Black-Jewish relations. Ms. Pogrebin was a co-developer, with Marlo Thomas, of the Emmy award-winning children's classic "Free to Be, You and Me." She also lectures on a variety of topics and has received many awards. Her articles have been published in dozens of newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, Harpers Bazaar, George and Israel Horizons.

Nick Taylor has authored or collaborated on nine non-fiction books, most recently Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War. Previously, Taylor collaborated on John Glenn: A Memoir, the astronaut and former senator's best-selling 1999 autobiography. A Necessary End, Taylor's memoir of his parents' final years, was called by The Washington Post "one of the key stories of our time," and is frequently used in death and grief counseling. His story of an Israeli's journey into the German neo-Nazi underground, In Hitler's Shadow, (co-authored with Yaron Svoray), was released as the HBO feature movie, The Infiltrator. His other books include Sins of the Father, Ordinary Miracles, Bass Wars, and Healing Lessons, a collaboration with Sidney J. Winawer, M.D. Taylor's writing also has appeared in many national magazines. He is currently working on a popular history of the Works Progress Administration.

Scott Turow is the author of One L, about his experience as a first-year student at Harvard Law School, and six novels: Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, Pleading Guilty, The Laws of Our Fathers, Personal Injuries, and Reversible Errors. Mr. Turow's books have been translated into more than 25 languages and, in total, have sold approximately twenty-five million copies worldwide. They have won a number of literary awards. His latest book, Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty, was published on October 1, 2003.

Paul Aiken, an attorney, has been Executive Director of the Authors Guild since 1995. His commentary on copyright law has been published in The New York Times and Publishing Research Quarterly.